Resilience in agriculture relies on creating soil. Every gram of soil organic matter (SOM) holds 8 grams of water. By rotationally grazing our animals around our farm we have since 2011 (which is when we started taking soil samples) increased our SOM by 42%. Please note that the farm average is still 1.87%, which is marginally better than beach sand.

The underlying principle is that all the animals and their housing move regularly. The cattle are moved 4 times per day. The broilers and layers every day and the pigs once they have completely trashed an area which takes about 5 days. This ensures that the farm is neither overgrazed or overfertilised. Whether the conventional farming operation is caged or so called “free range” the housing is fixed and so the animals are under constant disease pressure as they live with their manure.

This picture explains why the vegan and vegetarian option is defeatist. Only animals managed properly, in this case broiler chickens, can regenerate soil. The dark green strips are where previous batches of chickens grazed in their enclosures and in the background the paler grass indicates that they have not grazed their yet. Sustainability is also a defeatist belief. Regenerative agriculture is the only option that we have left if we are to survive as a species for it is agriculture that is destroying the planet.

Above is a chicken we spatchcocked, marinated with herbs from the garden and enjoyed on the farm on which it was raised. Tasting our produce is one of the compulsory perks of the job.

If you don’t want to see any of the photos below and simply want our protocol then click here. It has the following sections. Daily tasks, additional tasks, materials sheet and vaccination program.

The chicks on day 1. Note the feeders, drinkers and heating lamp.

Our broilers operation is simple. We get the birds as day old chicks. We raise them inside a building for 3 weeks and then outside on the pastures for 4 weeks. Thereafter they go for slaughter in Hopefield.

The yellow on the beak at 11 o’clock is the yolk left from hatching out of the egg this morning.

The photos above are of a batch of 225 day olds on the day they hatched. We are lucky to have access to Ross chickens. We tried Cobb a long time ago and they were not as tough outside.

The greatest help you can be to your day olds is get them vaccinated and then fed and watered as soon as possible after hatching. More on our vaccination program in the protocol. Then you need to make sure their bedding is comfortable. We combine Zeolite (you can buy it from Agring – details in the protocol) with shavings. This is important as Zeolite binds to 27 Oxygen molecules, which enables it to help with your ammonia issues. The space that they are in is 3 metres by 3 metres. I would not put more birds in that space than 225. We have a second space for the other 225 that make up our 450 birds weekly.

Note the other lighting option. Also the drinkers have changed to bell drinkers which we buy from Poltek. Ditto the tube feeders. As the birds get bigger they are able to eat and drink from these devices which are easier to handle. They also move over to this feeding system when their food changes from the starter ration to the grower ration. It is very important that the birds get starter (Day 1 to Day 10), grower (Day 11 to Day 24) and then finisher (Day 12 to the end). You are wasting money on feed if you don’t stick to this.

The shavings/Zeolite combination needs to be turned every day. This is the best tool. It is a modified garden fork.

It is very important to have these hand sanitisers at the entrance to each room as you don’t want your staff handling the birds of different ages without sterilising their hands.

The enclosures on the land are 4m x 6m. It is critical to galvanise the metal. I promise you that if you try to do this with non-galvanized metal you will end up having to throw away your rusty enclosures. We have ours made by Rouan who is available on +27 76 197 1413.

At the back of the enclosures you need the wheels above so that you can move it daily. The daily moves are critical.

This is what we have made to attach to the tractor to pull the enclosure. Daily moves ensure neither overgrazing or undergrazing. The chickens very soon learn to accompany the enclosures on their moves.

The covers are made for us by SA Shade. Best to speak to Rudi on +27 84 503 6169. Under the shadecloth is a clear plastic which keeps rain off the birds. The sides are only shadecloth. You must have the ventilation along the sides at the bottom.

The team from Hopefield Abattoir where the wonderful team under the supervision of Essie and Tyrone do the job. Essie is on +27 82 7433 566

The birds have to be inside for 3 weeks as it is only after three weeks that they have enough feathers to handle the cold night time temperatures. These birds only reach sexual maturity at 20 weeks of age which is when they will be fully feathered and considering we slaughter at 7 weeks they look slightly bedraggled.

We got our first pigs on the 9th of June last year and it has taken us 14 months to iron out all our major problems. (The nature of farming is such that you will never be rid of all your problems). Hence the timing of these 4 videos. (If you are not interested in how and why we farm with pigs as we do, but rather want to know how we produce our pork in our on farm butchery then click here, alternatively if you want to know where to enjoy our produce then click here.)

First, some background. Since I started farming in December of 2008 my clients have been encouraging me to produce edible pork. They struggle with caged pork which is 99.9% of the market. Outdoor pig farming is an engineering challenge more than anything else. A pig is the most destructive of the domesticated animals and so their feeders, shade and drinkers need to be very strong but in our case need to be very light too. Light because the cornerstone of our fertility creation project is that we move all our animals constantly. It was only on the 27th of April 2016 that I experienced a model of outdoor pigs that I knew would work for us. Mzothule, more about him later, and I were privileged enough to spend the day with Hendrik O’Neil on his farm near Bela-Bela in Limpopo province. The fertility improvement on his farm from using only pigs is staggering. An old Allan Savory practitioner, he honed his skills of high density grazing/fertility creation with cattle but his new farm is too small for cattle and so by default he has ended up with pigs which are doing a magnificent job building resilience.

Second, I needed a champion to take on the pig project. Fortunately Mzothule Ndokweni wanted to farm with pigs. I knew him through the BioDynamic Association Internship programme. He became available at the time I heard about Hendrik.

Third a note on the videos. I filmed these on an afternoon just before rainstorm (we have only had 1/3 of our normal rain this year and it is our third year of poor rain) and so it is windy. Apologies for the sound quality. I also get excited and sometimes you can’t hear what I am saying. I have made some notes above each video of the salient points of the video. However to truly understand what we do then please come out from behind your computer screen and come into the light on our pastures to see for yourself.

Finally we move our pigs approximately every 3 days as that is when they have churned up the whole area. We move our cattle 4x per day and our chickens every day. We wait a minimum of 6 weeks before we graze the pastures again.

Video 1

This is about our growing-them-out-for-slaughter part.

The key achievement of the pigs has been that the area where they have only grazed, below the road, has 24% higher soil Carbon. Prior to the pigs both sides of the road had had exactly the same grazing by cattle over the years. Same soils. Same pastures planted. There are some photos at the bottom of the blog elaborating on this.

Waste is a human construct. Nature does not waste. Fortunately pigs consume “waste” that is normally thrown away or buried. Our pigs enjoy the non meat waste from the Spier Wine Farm restaurants as well as waste from a local supermarket and vegetable wholesaler for breakfast, eggs (broken ones from a big egg farm that used to be buried) for lunch, Bertie Coetzee’s organic maize soaked in whey for dinner whilst grazing and rooting in the pastures throughout the day. Bertie’s maize also powers our laying hen and broiler chicken operation. Click here to read about Bertie’s amazing work.

Video 2

Filmed a few minutes after the first one. Also about our growing-them-out-for-slaughter part.

The whey drinker is our third one. They smashed the first two and the bite nipples got blocked. It appears that this Class 12 200mm PVC pipe can handle Mr and Ms pig. There is also a ball valve where we have enlarged the opening.

With reference to the electric fencing you can run all of this off solar. It is key to have the two lines on the horizontal plane as well as the three on the vertical plane. You don’t need to pay the school fees that we have. We also made and galvanised the posts for the electric fence as those from the manufacturers are not pig proof. Also very important to use the 12.5mm Turbo Tape from Gallagher. In fact use only their equipment. Best to email Christo from Gallagher.

One thing I failed to mention, which was pointed out to me by one my mentors, Dick Isted, is that is is very important to keep spreading seed in the paddock where the pigs are so that they trample it into the ground, fertilise it and therefore ensure great regrowth of your pastures. The only free energy we have is from the sun and so by ensuring that your pastures are continually green you are maximising this energy. We buy the sweepings from our local seed company, Agricol, for this critical job.

Another key part of our farming is free choice mineral licks for all our livestock. Click here for the detailed story on this biological solution to many of your farming problems. Zinc is a must for outdoor pigs. In our three compartments are Khoisan salt/legume seeds, Zinc Sulfate with Khoisan salt and then the Pat Coleby mix which you can get in the detailed story referred to above.

The two pigs are in a creep feeder. This enables the smaller pigs to get to food that the big ones cannot get to and so we have better growth and happier pigs. Another great idea from our pig mentor, Hendrik O’Neil.

Our hospital patients are in the other creep feeder.

Zincalume is the material that we have covered their Shademobiles with. It remains cool to the touch even when it gets over 40 Celsius here in summer.

The speed with which they acclimatise is amazing. No sunburn and hairy within weeks of coming out of the cages. We are currently buying caged weaner until Bodman’s babies are born and weaned.

You will notice that we don’t have any boars in this group. This is because we don’t want the boar taint in our meat. Uncastrated male pigs develop a terrible taint in their meat after 154 days of age. As our outdoor pigs grow slower than the caged pigs we kill many days after 154.

The last words in this video are “A pig is a beautiful thing, it is a tractor that you can eat when it is finished working.”

Video 3

This is about our breeding operation.

Bodman, our Duroc stud boar, turns 1 on the 26th of August. We are crossing our Large White/Landrace gilts with him to have darker offspring as this makes them suffer less in the sun.

Video 4

Following on from above, relating to the breeding operation. A few minutes later.

These are non meat kitchen scraps from our home. Our earthworms are a little bleak as they used to feast on this but we now give them cow manure which they are very happy with.

The photo above illustrates the increased Carbon point I was making above. The pigs have never grazed above the road which is demarcated by the poles running across the photo.

The snout of a pig is one of the greatest farm implements. No diesel to run this tractor. No drunk tractor driver. No compaction of your soils. It fertilises as it goes.

A close up of the whey drinker in the video above.

One of our sons with the first batch in the first week after their arrival.

BioDynamic consultant Vincent Masson with Mzukisi and the pigs. In the background you can see the water drinker which is also a provider of shade. It is designed to be turned on it’s side and rolled to the next camp. Everything in this type of farming must be movable.

I explained earlier about the green growing grasses. The photo above is understood as follows. In the foreground is where the breeding operation has been. They have moved to the left. In time they will return from the left and graze the area in the background. The sweepings have helped the regrowth.

Herewith an explanation of how we make our double smoked bacon. It is one of the products that we produce in our on farm butchery. We don’t add nitrates or nitrites to any of our products. If you want to read about the dangers of nitrites and nitrates, make sure you have enjoyed your last helping of conventional bacon, salami, ham, frankfurters etc as once you have read about it, it won’t taste so good anymore. Click here for The WHO report on cancer and processed meat.

Here is half a pig carcass less the head (which goes to one of our supporters, Chef Giles Edwards at La Tete in Cape Town). It is hung in the coldroom at 0.3 Celsius for 4 days prior to processing. Our pork is darker than the caged version (99.9% of the market) because the beta carotenes and the chlorophyll in the pastures that they consume have this effect. It is the same reason our eggs don’t need an additive to colour the yolks and genuine grass fed beef has yellow fat.

Same carcass, from the other side. The one behind has had the shoulder complex removed. Our pigs are slaughtered in Malmesbury. At the same abattoir as our cattle.

The loins, in essence the torso of the pig, are now ready to be deboned. They will be split down the length and the part with more meat (to the bottom left of the photo) will become back bacon and the part with more fat will become streaky bacon.

Spencer Nicholls, our 72 year old butchery master, taking the loin off the bone. More about Spencer here.

Spencer taking off the fat. Some clients take the skin to make crackling. We turn the fat into lard which is pictured below.

Our lard is available for sale at our clients. If they don’t stock it, then give them a hard time for denying you this wonderful cooking aid. Our clients are listed here or click on BUY MEAT at the top of the page.

Spencer starting to remove the belly ribs.

The last stage of removing belly ribs. We usually brine and smoke these.

Talent putting a belly into the brine. For 24 hours. This consists of water, salt (the same salt in our free choice mineral licks and in all our meat, Khoisan unwashed), sugar and spices.

The bacon in The Spencer, our smoker/cooker which you can read about here, prior to being smoked.

The same post the double smoking.

Phello and Talent with the bacon post smoking, prior to cooling before packing.

Maxwell pointing out to Wellington the finer details of slicing bacon.

We pack in 500 grams for our restaurant clients and 250 grams for our retail clients. A big thanks to Eddie Lomas for designing our stickers and to SA Litho for printing the stickers.

We also sell bacon steaks, pictured above. As you can see our meat does not stay pink post cooking. This is because we don’t add nitrates or nitrites.

Talent is the centre of attention here.

Our new uniforms.

Our new packaging for our pets mince. It is the red offal (organs) of our cattle. The hearts have gone to Giles at La Tete and the livers into either liver spread (see below) or dried liver strips which we sell to two pet shops. Hillside Vet in Cape Town and About Cats and Dogs in Stellenbosch. Hence our pets mince is spleen, gullet, lungs, part of the tongue and kidneys. Pets mince should be available at all our retail clients. It is frozen. As with all our packaging it is done by the great team at Geiger Klotzbucher in Cape Town, ask for Francois or Christiaan.

As referred to above.

The frankfurters en route the chiller post being smoked and cooked in The Spencer.

Our packaged pork frankfurters. Complete with enjoyment instructions.

Some of our pork bangers we smoked and cook in The Spencer, hence for you to enjoy them all you need to do is heat them up in water as per the enjoyment suggestions.

Our latest product, which we launched last week, is spreadable salami. Made from our pigs. Either in the bottle for retail or in a sausage casing for the restaurants (or for big families). Click here to find out where to obtain or enjoy our produce.

Pierre “Juby” Morton was our first client to see the new bacon packaging. He is one of the drivers behind the great Know Thy Farmer initiative.

I grew up on a cattle ranch in Kwa-Zulu Natal. Studied Management Accounting at Stellenbosch University before stockbroking for Goldman Sachs in London for just over four years. Declined the offer of promotion, left my job and moved to South Africa. Built a clay home with inspiration from various people on the way leading to me become a biodynamic student, grass farmer and carbon sequestrator.